[?] I need some Link Building Guidance
So, after weeks of playing around with GSA SER and no mentionable results, I figured it's porbably time to seek some advice.
I will describe my whole link building strategy as detailed as possible and provide you with all the neccessary details so you have all the information you need to be able to give me advice and help me figure out my problem.
My project:
Tools / resources used:
My link structure:
Nothing fancy, just your regular link pyramid. My tiers are contextual d0f0ll0w only and my secondary links consist of anything but contextual d0f0ll0w.
This is my engine selection + options for my CDFs
And this is for my Secondary Links
*Note: The lower the tier, the easier the filters (see very first picture for details).
My link building approach
Results
Now let's get to the reason why I'm here. My results aren't even bad, because that'd mean there are results. My results are pretty much non existent. These are the stats for my links I started building ~8 days ago.
T1 Link Chart
T2 Link Chart
T1A Link Chart:
T2A + T2B Link Chart:
My anchor cloud is a little messed up, but that's because I didn't go easy on the secondary links pointing directly at my blog (lots of chinese/japanese anchors and not that balanced) and I obviously wouldn't do this if this were my money site. Out of ~70 keywords, not even one is ranked within Top500. I'm a little stumped to be honest, especially since I've read quite a lot of times that people have ranked their websites in easy competition niches only using a quality article, combined with a couple of pictures and no SEO whatsoever or people ranking their website within the top10 for easy keywords within 2-3 weeks. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting skyrocketing SERP movements because some guy posted he ranked his website within days, but I haven't seen any movement at all, which is why I figured I'm probably doing something wrong.
I'd love to hear your opinions on this.
Just one thing - as you can see I've put a lot of time and effort into this to make this as easy for you as possible. All I'm asking in return is that you take some time, too and put some thought into your post.
Thanks in advance guys.
EDIT: I've stumbled upon a thread on another forum actually talking about this very matter. Is it possible that G is slowing down the ranking process? People have reported ranking fairly quickly for their branding name, but even the pro churn&burners reported that after 1-2 months they haven't seen any movement at all.
Did I just start my ranking journey at a very bad time, since there are obviously some changes, and drew the wrong conclusion?
I will describe my whole link building strategy as detailed as possible and provide you with all the neccessary details so you have all the information you need to be able to give me advice and help me figure out my problem.
My project:
- easy competition keywords (2k - 8k exact searches)
- I'm using a parasite for this test project (wordpress)
- I'm only using GSA SER + social signals
- I've got decent on page SEO (my main article is ~400-500 words long and consists of rewritten bits of my competitors content)
- I use H1 and H2 tags and proper formatting
- I've filled the page with ~7 more pages of unrelated (ripped off) content to make the site appear 'alive'
- I've created a Twitter and FB profile and linked them to my website
- I've created and uploaded a YT video with links pointing to my website (google shortener is used)
IMPORTANT: I am 100% aware that a short article + 7 ripped off articles aren't even close to what you (and I too) would define as rich content. However, I looked through the top 10 and some of the ranking websites have content that make mine shine.
Also, this whole thread isn't about quality link building. If I were to build an authority website I would approach this differently. Right now I'm trying to learn how to spam content rank.
Tools / resources used:
- GSA SER
- GSA SEO Indexer
- Incredible Indexer
- SpinRewriter
- My own verified link list (+ 1 bought list from SERLists)
My link structure:
Nothing fancy, just your regular link pyramid. My tiers are contextual d0f0ll0w only and my secondary links consist of anything but contextual d0f0ll0w.
This is my engine selection + options for my CDFs
And this is for my Secondary Links
*Note: The lower the tier, the easier the filters (see very first picture for details).
My link building approach
- I didn't hold back on volume on any tier, since it's a parasite (usually I'd go very easy on T1 and T0A)
- As soon as my upper level links get verified I start building links to them
- I use spun content on all of my tiers
- On lower tiers I allow posting multiple times to the same URL, on T1 I don't
- While building links I sent ~1k Twitter retweets to the website
Results
Now let's get to the reason why I'm here. My results aren't even bad, because that'd mean there are results. My results are pretty much non existent. These are the stats for my links I started building ~8 days ago.
T1 Link Chart
T2 Link Chart
T1A Link Chart:
T2A + T2B Link Chart:
My anchor cloud is a little messed up, but that's because I didn't go easy on the secondary links pointing directly at my blog (lots of chinese/japanese anchors and not that balanced) and I obviously wouldn't do this if this were my money site. Out of ~70 keywords, not even one is ranked within Top500. I'm a little stumped to be honest, especially since I've read quite a lot of times that people have ranked their websites in easy competition niches only using a quality article, combined with a couple of pictures and no SEO whatsoever or people ranking their website within the top10 for easy keywords within 2-3 weeks. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting skyrocketing SERP movements because some guy posted he ranked his website within days, but I haven't seen any movement at all, which is why I figured I'm probably doing something wrong.
I'd love to hear your opinions on this.
Just one thing - as you can see I've put a lot of time and effort into this to make this as easy for you as possible. All I'm asking in return is that you take some time, too and put some thought into your post.
Thanks in advance guys.
EDIT: I've stumbled upon a thread on another forum actually talking about this very matter. Is it possible that G is slowing down the ranking process? People have reported ranking fairly quickly for their branding name, but even the pro churn&burners reported that after 1-2 months they haven't seen any movement at all.
Did I just start my ranking journey at a very bad time, since there are obviously some changes, and drew the wrong conclusion?
Comments
You're not going to rank for all your 70 keywords with only 200 tier 1 links, unless you building a lot more tier 2's than what you have.
I am currently able to rank in a matter of weeks, so no problems here!
Your page/site needs to have authority and the only way for that to happen is by building a few high pr links or by creating your own high pr links, which takes hundreds of thousand crappy article links pointing to your tier 1's.
Even assuming you are targeting your 70 keywords only, you are getting 3 links per keyword, not going to get you anywhere. You may even be doing some generic/URL anchors too which could mean even less links per keyword.
Plus, for contextual links, it looks like you have under 500 unique domains you are able to hit? I would want to have at least 2k unique domains to hit on any site I work on, even this is a little low.
Other variables too, like link velocity, but with that low volume the only potential issue would be it is too slow.
I guess I accidentally caused some confusion here.
I'm actually targetting ~3-4 main keywords. All the other keywords are KW suggestions generated by Scrapebox and GKT which I deemed worthy keeping track of. They're LSIs or only somewhat related to my niche. I only added them to get an overall impression of SERP movement.
@Tim89 May I ask you how you define 'ranking in a matter of weeks'? Are you steadily climbing the SERPs from day1, or does it take you a while to actually be visible in the SERPs? I'm asking because a lot of people have reported that all new website's they've created are stuck in the sandbox a lot longer than previous sites and then once the period is over they instantly jump up to top rankings.
Since you've already brought up the quality > quantity matter, would you say that increasing the strictness of my T1 filters (i.e. PR3+) would be a step in the right direction, even if it's obviously not a solution to the problem.
@Flembot These are the stats after a couple of days. I'm able to hit a lot more than that, but some of them get removed, too, since I'm running spam campaigns and therefore don't use the highest quality articles on T1. The number is higher by now.
Also, what about my settings in general? Any obvious mistakes or recommendations?
i use a similar system to yours on all my new sites and i get them ranking in days..
80% of my keywords will get to page 5 but not move from there.
I built a brand new site at the end of last week at its sitting in the top 40 for the main keyword already. Literally, all I've done to it is automate a couple of dozen web2s, a few bookmarks and point 1 or 2 links at it from my network. nothing else.
However, if you want to hit page 1 in less than a couple of months you are probably going to have to think outside the box a bit.
"outside the box"?
can you give us a clue? i can't seem to budge from page 5!
shall i just be patient and carry on building links at a moderate pace?
thanks
I stopped building links to this blog ~2 days ago, because I decided to let these links sink in and rather focus on scraping stronger targets to post to.
I may even create a new project in the same niche and try this again with more and much stronger links on T1 and see how it goes.
@Tim89 I've read about your indexing service and I wanted to try it out, but currently I'm in no position (financially) to be able to afford an indexing service at this pricing.
That's so weird man.. my site definitely is indexed and the on page SEO may not be the best but it's not the worst, either. My niche is.. well let's say it's complicated to write about and really hard to come up with some useful content, but most of my top10 competitors rank with 50-100w articles (they aren't even articles, they're barely comments about the niche/topic sprinkled with a couple of KWs)
@2Take2 I absolutely agree with your point of view and I think that content actually does matter a lot. However, I've chosen a particularly easy niche where content doesn't matter that much (at least that's what I believed) because I saw what crap my competitors ranked with.
If I was competing against very well designed authority domains with great on page SEO, I wouldn't even be writing in this thread, because then it'd be more than obvious to me why I'm not ranked. But my competition is more than ridiculous (at least on page SEO wise) which I deemed this niche to be more than worthy for an off-page SEO training ground - see how their SEO competes against my approach.
Bonus Question:
This one's for you social network pros. I guess it's safte to assume that Google values G+ profiles and posts much more than anything else and therefore they rank quite easily, don't they? I'm asking, because one of my G+ posts is sitting on #4 for a single word KW (brand) that has ~850.000 exact searches per month. It's pretty much worthless, because the KW won't ever get me any traffic (it's like ranking a G+ post for Sony - people googling for Sony are obviously looking for their homepage)
What exactly do you mean by 'most important anchor text pages'. Are you suggesting to use tier filters when building backup links on lower tiers? Because right now the only filter I'm using is to only target T1 dofollow links with my T2 links.
I don't have any experience with handbuilding 2.0s. I would definitely do this if I were to rank a valuable money site, but this project is supposed to be a spam ranking project, something you do on the side and sort of a 'set and forget' SER project.
Also, I don't have any experience with PBNs at all. This is something I was going to try on my valuable money sites, as they're quite expensive, aren't they (at least if you're looking for quality)?
No, no, I'm definitely not relying on SER alone. I guess I should explain myself a little better here.
This project and this whole thread is only about the SER link building part of my SEO repertoire. The whole purpose of this was to improve my SER skills and to figure out how strong SER is and how much I should focus on SER links when working on an authority site.
I'll be doing the exact same thing for social signals, PBN/hand built links and a couple of other methods, too. My goal is to isolate each component and see how effective each one is for itself so I know how to prioritise these method when trying to rank in competitive environments.
There will still be a way to make C&B work though, but I've not really had time to research it, and carry out the necessary testing. I've got some nice ideas, that I *think* should work though.
Also, unless your're targeting some very difficult keywords, you should be able to reach at least page 2 or 3 before the site sticks. Either way, I'd just carry on as normal for the time being (whilst testing other ideas too), as the site will rank in the end, provided you're building links and carrying out your SEO correctly.
Tixxpff - I see what you're saying about your competition not having good content, but surely if you're writing it, it's just as easy to create solid google optimised content as it is to just write any old rubbish?
I mean, if your goal is to test the effectiveness of SER in isolation, you will probably get more meaningful results if you use it to build links to a properly optimised page, otherwise it will always be a bit hit and miss.
thanks for that..they are very difficult keywords, so i will just have to be patient and experiment.
thanks
If by which you possibly mean, you hit a certain point and you can't go any further... then this is called keyword competition and you'll just have to raise your seo game a little..
The way I approach my seo is always think big.. why start building low numbers... when you can just build out your seo plan in full and avoid any 'sticking' scenarios.
no need for that mate..., i thought you were alright aswell..plus i have your indexer service.
i hope i'm not being too serious here but this is one of the reasons why some people do not ask questions when they are struggling for the fear of being ridiculed..
all i was looking for is a clue to help me thats all.
I was asking @2Take2 a question, I wasn't mocking anyone, I believe that we all had to start from somewhere, so forgive my arrogance if I may come across as rude.
o.k, thanks mate.., i hope to make more contribution to this forum soon once i get things moving. i often wonder how many people on here make money from affiliate marketing because its hard work but i'm not giving up so easily...
In the past, my sites would move up the ranks steadily within the first couple of months until they got to where I wanted them, maybe there would be a few ups and downs along the way, but there was a continuous upwards trend. Now they move up the ranks until they hit position 11 - 30, and then won't budge for a while.
I'd like to believe that it's just down to 'keyword competition', but it seems more to me that something has definitely changed recently, unless all of my competitors have suddenly got much better over the last couple of months. lol
With regards to strategy, I agree that it's a good Idea to think big, and I also build hundreds of thousands of tiered contextuals for certain projects, in various different ways, but there's also many other ways to skin a cat, which you well know.
Edit. Unnecessary comments removed by me.
I also like to use lots of secondary related anchors to add more relevance, dilute my anchor text ratios, and pick up more long tail.
What do you mean by 'at maximum' though?
I'd even go further an say that not only some people, but most people have questions, but are afraid to ask (at least the SEO noobs/novices).
@2Take2 I'm pretty sure you've already heard about this, but what you're experiencing sounds very similar to the recent Google Panda 4.0 update issues. People have been complaining that they're either not ranking at all for a long time and then suddenly shoot up the SERPs (it's assumed the sandbox time has been increased to make C&B much less effective and profitable) or people climb the SERPs until they hit a plateau and then stay there for a while and no SEO efforts whatsoever seem to be effective (again some sort of sandbox mechanism).
How SE can differentiate a site that instantly satisfied with a spam site? If my website seem to be in sandbox, i increase rate more again, never stop
@kaine - thanks for the clarification.